House spending cuts go to Senate

Republicans will bring their House-passed spending cuts to the Senate floor Wednesday amid rank-and-file grumbling inside the GOP and with no sign of capturing the Democratic defections needed to command a simple majority — let alone the 60 votes for passage.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will fare only marginally better with his plan to cut tens of billions of dollars less over the remainder of the fiscal year. But a Republican defeat stands to have much more import, setting the stage for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to begin showing more flexibility in talks with Senate Democrats and the White House.

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As approved by the House on Feb. 19, the Republican package would reduce spending to $1.026 trillion, or about $61.3 billion below the level coming into this year. Using the same benchmarks, the Senate Democratic alternative stops just below $1.079 trillion, an $8.7 billion reduction that leaves the two sides about $52 billion apart.

Bridging the gap will require more concessions by the administration, but Republicans are also looking to President Barack Obama to a striking degree to help them walk back their party from what many privately admit is a serious overreach by the House.

“The president should be convening congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle to sit down and craft a spending reduction package ... that is both thoughtful and substantial,” said Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, clearly torn by the politics of Wednesday’s vote. And her colleague, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), told POLITICO that while the Democratic alternative is “totally inadequate,” the House bill includes “specific program cuts that ... are too deep and do not allow time to wind down activities.”

“It may be a lot of these programs could be cut if they were given time to adjust to lower levels of funding. ... Teach for America has been an enormously successful program. ... What do they do, lay off the teachers who have contracts?”

Going into Tuesday night, the GOP leadership hoped to minimize defections. But even South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who pledged to back the bill, said he has long-term concerns about putting in place an estimated $10 billion reduction in State Department and foreign aid accounts, which would affect post-war Iraq and front-line countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“The holding, building and transitioning cannot possibly be done without the civilian component,” Graham said. “If we don’t wall off some of this money that’s an integrated part of the military-civilian plan, we cannot be successful in Iraq or Afghanistan, and we will not maintain credibility in Pakistan.”

The challenge for the GOP is to walk back now without losing more tea party supporters who helped drive the cuts in the first place. Already, there are some unhappy conservatives who don’t believe the House package goes far enough.

Freshman Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) signaled that he will vote no— despite appeals by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is from his home state.

“It codifies spending at $1.5 trillion in debt,” Paul told POLITICO, referring to deficit projections this year even after the cuts. “I wouldn’t vote for that much debt.”